IN Northeast India, the term ‘operation’ invokes a disturbing history
of military exercises related to counter insurgency. Decades of security
operations in the region have left behind a sordid saga of human rights
violations. India’s Northeast is one of the most militarised regions
in South Asia. However, of late, the discourse on the region has shifted
away from a crude counter insurgency induced vision of the region towards
a ‘Look East policy’ that at first glace offers a different perspective
based on a combination of development necessities and historical links
between the region and its Southeast Asian neighbourhood.1

It is apparent
that the Look East policy is primarily being pursued as an economy-centric
endeavour with visions of a prosperous Northeast connected in more ways
than one to the markets of Southeast Asia. The policy envisages the
growth of communication, industries and trade that will (ostensibly)
enable the people in the Northeast region to significantly improve their
quality of lives. While this may sound like a feasible project, doubts
remain about what will constitute the nitty-gritty of this project.
‘Soft’ resources, like cultural contiguity with Southeast Asian neighbours
and India’s Northeast, seem like an area where much can be accomplished.
It is in this sphere that imaginative policies can be formulated.

The promotion
of the Naga hornbill festival as a major tourist attraction is therefore
a recent trend to that effect – an event celebrating culture, food and
handicraft all laid out for those willing to taste and buy ‘culture’.
The hornbill festival is part of a larger campaign promoting the Northeast
region as a ‘tourist destination’. The emergence of a new imagination
in the subcontinent constructs the region as a cultural hub encompassing
everything there is to see and taste in Southeast Asia within the territory
of South Asia.

In an effort
to promote the Look East policy, the Indian government has obliquely
recognized the close historical and cultural ties that the Northeast
region shares with its Southeast Asian counterparts.2
However, it would be wise not to romanticize the new enthusiasm with
which the Government of India seems to be handling the region. This
article is less optimistic about the possibilities and seeks to outline
the hegemony of the security discourse, where events like the Naga Hornbill
Festival 2004 are not merely about ‘showcasing unique cultures’ but
also a matter of giving the army/paramilitary a greater say over civic
events and policy-making.

What is
the Naga hornbill festival and what does it signify? In 2000, the Government
of Nagaland initiated the hornbill festival project as a cultural event
that coincided with Nagaland statehood day on 1 December. Statehood
is a very contentious political issue for Nagas. Nagaland was inaugurated
as the sixteenth state within the Indian Union in 1963, the result of
a negotiation3 between the Government of India and a section
of Naga elites, generally known as the ‘moderates’ in the Naga national
movement.4
Six years (1957-1963) of political negotiation between Naga People’s
Convention (Naga moderates) and the Government of India enabled a Naga
elite to consolidate state power under the leadership of the first chief
minister of Nagaland, P. Shilu Ao, and to adopt to the Indian model
of parliamentary political parties (on the lines of the National Congress).

However,
the struggle for self determination did not end with the formation of
Nagaland. Instead the armed struggle for Naga independence re-emerged
as a rallying point for not ‘selling out’ to pecuniary inducement. Hence,
celebration of statehood became an act of compromise, thereby encouraging
a parallel politics of commemorating Naga national martyrs and 14 August
by sections of Naga political society.5
The Indo-Naga ceasefire signed between the National Socialist Council
of Nagalim (NSCN) and the Government of India in 1997 changed the political
milieu in Naga society.

It was
within such a political glasnost that the Government of Nagaland
embarked upon the hornbill festival. Naga civil society organisations
were invited to join and create a platform dedicated to initiating peace
and reconciliation among the Naga people. At a consultative meeting
before the festival was launched, participants suggested that if the
government was serious about the Indo-Naga ceasefire, the hornbill festival
should be an appropriate occasion to bring together various Naga communities
– not only to showcase their handloom but also share a civic space that
was not defined by the militarised political milieu of the region.

The
hornbill festival (as an annual event) started with great pomp on 1
December 2004 near Kohima, the capital of Nagaland. It was advertised
in national journals, newspapers and weeklies. The text of a glossy
advertisement in a national weekly called an untrained audience to ‘…experience
the diverse pulsating rhythms and colours of Nagaland’ and was accompanied
by visual images of Naga men in traditional attire beating on a wooden
drum; Naga women serving food cooked in stems of bamboo hollows as well
as two Naga men helping each other ‘suit up’ in traditional gear.6 The five day event was meant to draw people
from all over the region and indeed from other parts of the world as
well.

The festival
venue was done up as though it were a Naga village, complete with ceremonial
gates, amphitheatres, boys’ dormitories, granaries and so on. Sixteen
different huts, signifying the 16 Naga tribes that (officially) inhabit
Nagaland were constructed with the token huts of Kuki and Kachari communities
thrown in.7 As advertised, the colours and tastes were
truly unlike anything one would see in festivals in South Asia. Where
else would pork, beef and assorted Naga delicacies be so grandly offered
to people in the largely vegetarian Hindu heartland of mainland India?
Where else would people strip down to their shawls and mekhelas (sarongs),
traditional headgear and display tattoos with ‘Mettalica’ inscribed
on their backs?8 And on a more cautious note, where else would
the army play such a big role in organising and participating in an
event meant to showcase ‘culture’?

Kisema,
the location of the ‘Naga heritage village’, where the festival was
hosted lies on the historic Burma Road that links Kohima to Imphal and
beyond. As one negotiates the mountainous terrain to reach the venue
of the hornbill festival, concrete posts on the road side remind travellers
of the historical importance of the road where fierce battles were fought
during World War II between the Allies and the Japanese. Alongside epitaphs
of Naga national martyrs beside the highway, serpentine lines of Indian
security personnel, in an ironical twist in the script, patrol the mountains
providing security for generals and politicians who seek to save the
nation. Amidst all the frenzy of guns, mountain patrols and traffic
jams, beautiful Naga girls adorned with shells, bells and colourful
beads along with handsome Naga men with tattoos and feathers trying
hard to look like modern ‘warriors’, are preparing to sing and dance
at the hornbill festival.

Throughout
the event, personnel of the Assam Rifles – a paramilitary force notorious
for their human rights violations in the hills of Northeast India –
were stationed at strategic points. On 2 December 2004, one of the ‘honoured
guests’ at the festival was the current Director General of the paramilitary
force, Bhupinder Singh. He arrived, with his family and entourage, to
view the Naga dances. Other guests included a World War II veteran,
whose trip to visit the site of his battles had been sponsored by the
British government. The war veteran sat on a podium along with the paramilitary
officials and their families. In front of them, cultural troupes from
different Naga communities and villages performed their complicated
dances. Behind the artists sat a quiet audience of thousands – Nagas,
some Indians, and media – and they watched the men of war watch the
dancers and them.

This ironic
interplay of audience and performers seemed like an apt and poignant
reminder of the ubiquitous presence of men in uniform in the region.
Surrounding the amphitheatre where the dances were performed, Assam
Rifles personnel were mulling around makeshift first aid stalls, ostensibly
manning them, while they clicked photographs and videotaped the event.
The master of ceremonies periodically asked members of the audience
(mainly over-enthusiastic tourists and camera persons) to ‘stay off’
the performing area, as it caused ‘inconvenience to the artists’. Clearly,
such exhortations were not meant for the paramilitary personnel, who
jumped right into the centre of things, zealously recording the embarrassing
occasion of their officers trying to keep pace with an Ao war dance.9 It was abundantly clear that even though
the hornbill festival was a government initiative that sought to involve
civil society, it was the security personnel who provided the logistical
support.

The
role of the military in civic events in the Northeast is not new. It
is centrally tied to efforts to contain insurgency. The Indian state
has followed its aggressive policy of containment overriding human rights
issues along with psychological operations.10
The ‘smiling
policy’ (sic) initiated by the Indian security forces tried to win people
over by making friends with them with food rations and medical aid to
the villages.

As
part of the smiling policy, an Indian army general, in his public speech
in a Naga village, stated: ‘Yesterday we came to your village as enemies,
today we come as friends. Together the Nagas and we will build this
nation into a great nation. Your contribution is important. You are
a wonderful people, a hard working people and without the Nagas, without
the hill people, we are not complete. You are not complete without the
Indians and altogether we are all Indians. I am very happy to be in
your village. Your Nagaland history is my history. My history is your
history. Today I have brought a few gifts for all of you.’11

The ‘gift’
comprised cases of rum bottles which were distributed to the villagers
who were very happy. For the next few days they were all drunk. While
food and rum are distributed, the Naga Peoples Movement for Human Rights,
in its report ‘Violations of Civil and Political Rights in Naga Areas’,
gives a chronology of abuses by the Indian Army from 1948 till the present
day.12 The British Broadcasting Corporation report
on Nagaland described the region as ‘sealed off from the outside world,
(and) home to one of the world’s longest running insurgencies…no one
knows exactly how many people have been killed in the conflict, but
some estimate that between 100,000 and 200,000 have been killed.’13

The government’s
failure to tackle Naga insurgency has only made military control more
rigid and powerful through various laws and regulations. Thus, Naga
society has been influenced by the Indian military establishment, not
as a result of a deliberate choice of the people but as a result of
an accumulation of military decisions and commitments that have been
beyond the control of democratic processes.

In
the meantime, crucial matters relating to human rights violations and
justice remain unresolved. For instance, despite the peppy display of
good intent on the part of the Assam Rifles director general (at the
hornbill festival), allegations of torture and rape are not easily forgotten.
According to a recent news report, the 19 Rajput Regiment stationed
at Tuilaphai (Manipur) has been involved in a counter insurgency operation
since October 2004.14 In a report submitted by the village chiefs
to the Manipur Hills Journalist Union office, people in Tipaimukh, Thanlon
and Henglep constituencies were being subjected to draconian restrictions.
Surveillance on food items, restrictions on transportation of medicines,
battery, candles, kerosene and other essential commodities were a part
of the restrictions imposed by the Indian security personnel. Cases
of deaths from want of medical attention and food were being reported
as late as January 2005.15

Local
people complained that they were being used as human shields and were
coerced into forced labour by the security personnel. They also reported
having being beaten up for ‘not being able to speak in Hindi’.16 The chief also said that army personnel had
occupied Pangshang Church and the local people were not allowed to worship
there. The villagers, according to the report, were therefore forced
to shift their village. All this continues to take place barely a few
hundred kilometres from Kisema (the venue of the hornbill festival)
barely a month after the hornbill celebrations.

The former
prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, recently spoke of ‘the establishment
of an East Asian community’ where India should be included to ‘expand
the market… (and) force more specialization and division of labour.’17 While political opinion in Southeast Asia
favours India’s Look East policy, one needs to take into consideration
India’s view of Southeast Asia mirrored in its policies in its Northeastern
backyard. Decades of dependence on a seriously flawed military orientation
have led to a pejorative depiction of the ‘Orient at its doorstep.’ 18

There exists
a dangerous disconnect in the common Indian appreciation of the myriad
histories of the aspirations of the indigenous peoples of the Northeast.
‘Thin on facts, lacking in true curiosity, replete with confident naiveties,
picturesque clichés and spicy exoticisms,’ allows for sociological shorthand
that is anything but innocent.19
This view merges with a notion that the army simply must be allowed
a free run and serves as a handy justification for oppression. Showcase
events like the horn-bill festival, with catchy slogans coined in sanitised
offices of the tourism department, hide a murky story of the hegemonic
control of the military establishment in civil and political affairs
in the Northeast. If anything, they add to the distortion of everyday
realities that are vital in reconstituting the social and political
voice of the people. This is where the Look East policy confronts a
world outside economic rhetoric.

The
experience of the Naga Hornbill Festival 2004 is a reminder of the emergence
of a parasitic dependency that people in the Northeast region in general
and the Naga people in particular are entering into, with Indian security
institutions. The dynamics of political and social history in the region
have created a situation where-by public space and administration have
been co-opted by military and security structures. Thus, with the selective
silence on the current Look East policy, it is not difficult to imagine
the Northeast region as an economic-military zone whereby security,
trade and market are regulated by the army and their paid warlords,
where justice and peace are as marketable as the exotica on display
at the hornbill festival.

Footnotes:

1. For detailed analyses of emerging possibilities
of transnational politics and India’s Look East policy see: Sanjib Baruah,
Between South and Southeast Asia: Northeast India and the Look East
Policy (Ceniseas Papers). Guwahati: Centre for Northeast India,
South and Southeast Asia Studies, OKD Institute of Social Change and
Development, 2004.

2. Refer to I.K. Gujral’s speech (minister of external
affairs and water resources of India) in the first meeting of the ASEAN-Indian
joint cooperation committee, New Delhi, 14-16 November 1996. http://www.aseansec.org/4338.htm

3. The 16 point agreement, signed between the Naga
moderates and the Government of India led to the creation of Nagaland
state. However, this agreement has been looked upon as a ‘betrayal’
by the Nagas in general since the Indo-Naga conflict has not only become
intense but it has led to a division of the Naga polity leading to fratricidal
killings.

4. The moderates formed the Naga People’s Convention
under the guidance of S.M. Dutt, Deputy Director of the Indian Intelligence
Bureau.

5. 14 August 1947 was the date the Nagas declared their
independence from British India. Significantly, this date is one day
ahead of the official date for Indian independence. August 14 celebrations
were an eyesore for the Indian administration during the days of counter-insurgency
and various laws were imposed to prevent people from commemorating ‘Naga
Independence Day’. After the Indo-Naga ceasefire in 1997, the administration
has been turning a ‘Nelson’s eye’ to such events. Local rumours suggest
that these days, even Indian army officials are invited by the Naga
army to ‘celebrate Naga Independence Day’!

6. ‘Hornbill Festival 2004’ issued by the Directorate
of Tourism, Government of Nagaland in Outlook, 29 November 2004.

7. The 16 huts – each assigned to one of the 16 Naga
tribes in the state of Nagaland – immediately raised concerns about
the political implications of leaving out Naga communities living in
the state of Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Assam and Burma.

8. A young Ao male dancer from a village near Mokukchung
had ‘Metallica’ tattooed on his back. His village does not have a tattoo
parlour, instead villagers practice tattooing as they did in the past.
The ‘tradition and modernity’ motif – the kind that makes anthropologists
swoon – rests easy in a land where most youth have been educated in
missionary schools and English is a link language. Of course, the effects
of ‘westernization’ leading to ‘drugs and rock and roll’ is also a discourse
that has its takers in Nagaland but this paper does not wish to enter
into that largely obscure debate as yet.

9. The Ao warrior dance involves a series of vigorous,
complicated movements by trained dancers beating their small war drums.
Even a spontaneous dance requires teamwork. Therefore, a performance
at the hornbill festival must have taken weeks, if not months, of painstaking
training and coordination. It is also a dance that gets people tapping
their feet and moving to the rhythm of the drums. Halfway through the
performance, the paramilitary officers and their families decided that
it was time for them to shake a leg. The dance was disrupted in order
to allow them to clumsily try their steps, drawing derisive laughter
from the audience.

10. The Amnesty International report on ‘Operation
Bluebird’ described the Indian government’s official reaction to the
allegations of large scale abuses and India reaction: ‘the central government
condoned the abuses, resisting many appeals that it order an investigation
into the allegations. The Assam Rifles – who report directly to the
central government’s Home and Defence Ministries – attempted to cover
up the abuses by wide scale harassment and intimidation of villagers,
especially those willing to testify in court. The Assam Rifles threatened
witnesses and some were arrested and tortured again in order to make
them retract their accusations.’ See Amnesty International report, ‘India:
Operation Bluebird: A Case Study of Torture and Extrajudicial Executions
in Manipur’, October 1990. AI INDEX: ASA 20/17/90/ DISTR: SC/CO/GR.

11. For more details see: IWGIA (International Work
Group for Indigenous Affairs), ‘The Naga Nation and its Struggle Against
Genocide’, No. 56, 1986.

12. Naga Peoples Movement on Human Rights, ‘Report
on Violation of Civil and Political Rights in Naga Areas’ http://www.
npmhr.org/chronology.htm. Last accessed on 15 May 2004.

18. For more details on the manner in which the Indian
public and political class view the Nagas (and other Northeastern communities)
see: Ram Narayan Kumar and Laxmi Murthy, Four Years of the Ceasefire
Agreement between the Government of India and The National Socialist
Council of Nagalim: Promises and Pitfalls,New Delhi: Other Media
Communications, 2002, pp. 163-164.